Tuesday, April 17, 2007

So it goes...

I was going to write about the awesome weekend I had in London visiting my sister and attending Bob Dylan's concert. Then I was struck by the news of the Virginia Tech Shootings, where a student of English shot 32 students in two separate shootings on the same day in VT Campus. So it goes. As I expected the conservatives began blaming the video games, National Rifles Association of USA has even linked the killings not to the lax rules on fire-arms in USA, but to their stringency. Their (ill) logic goes like this: had there been a student with a firearm he would be able to stop the maniac on the loose. Great. I'm sure they'd love Dr. Strangelove. Mutual Assured Destruction.

Why did this news affected me this much? After all I went to class everyday for two years passing under the infamous University of Texas Tower, from where ex-Marine Corp Charles Whitman shot 17 civilians on a sunny Austin day.So it goes. I found out why...

This weekend I read Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. It is composed of memories from the past and future of a American POW who survived the dreadful firebombing of Dresden on 14 Febuary 1945. Here is a BBC report about one of the cruelest crimes against humanity committed by the Allies, where between 25.000 and 100.000 people -various sources give different numbers- were either burned alive or suffocated. So it goes. For those who can bare to read it here is the official US Air Force report, it turns out with a kill rate of %2.5 it was a failure... The POW is blessed with the ability to live in the fourth dimension, so his able to travel in time, and live his life in any direction time he wishes . He choose to watch the bombing of Dresden in reverse. And it seemed so beautiful. Americans sent planes from thousands of miles away to collect the metallic shells filled with minerals which caused fire and death on Dresden. Almost magically they sucked them out of the ground and sent back them to America on heavily guarded ships so that they don't cause damage anymore. Then women in factories took the minerals out of their casings carefully, and the minerals were sent to specialists firms who dug underground to put the minerals which caused so much damage and death away from humans so that they don't kill anymore... Unfortunately not all of us are blessed with this gift to live our lives in reverse to see the minerals in metal casings which killed 33 people be put to pieces and buried underground. Or maybe only those who support gun ownership can...

Incidentally I had commented about Bob Dylan concert on my music blog. I satirically said:

" It was awesome. Perhaps not for people who wanted to hear him play Blowing in the Wind "

Because I thought, he had sung that song over and over again and people would know that it is the firearms that kill other human beings. I after the incident yesterday, I think he really should have sung this song...

"Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls flyBefore they're forever banned?"